Popcast: Why Be a Critic?

Two New York Times critics released books on the same day last month. Ben Ratliff, Popcast host and music critic, delivered “Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a book that proposes new frameworks for listening that avoid familiar genre connections and traps. A. O. Scott put out his first book, “Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty and Truth” (Penguin Press), with an argument for the value of criticism in an age where it is plentiful and also, in places, diminished.

We gathered for a special episode of Popcast to talk about both books, but more crucially to talk shop: Why be a critic? What good are critics? What’s the future for a critic, and for criticism?